Tuesday, November 30, 2010

70s Christian folk weirdness from Ann Ree Colton's Niscience lay ministry. Pretty catchy! According to their promotional literature, the school of Niscience (NISH-ence) aims to develop a "knowledge of your personal angels and how to work with them" through "the study of the seven genesis levels and the family-atom." An additional awesome goal is to "interpret the 'hard sayings' of Jesus." Ann Ree Colton and her partner Jonathan Murro also made and sold really cool art (see below.) Ann Ree is in the pink toga.

Monday, November 29, 2010

Try to create magical sounds, sounds with an unearthly, mysterious quality. Create misty sounds. Use voices to make frightening sounds or the ethereal sounds of fairies, elves and spirits. Find suitable instruments to enhance these effects as well as instruments to create such effects on their own. Magical textures could themselves be created in this way.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

This post about the upcoming release of an obscure Czech soundtrack by Zdenek Liska reminded me of something I've been meaning to share: a collection of Liska's music for Jan Svankmajer's stop-motion films. I love these films, and I think a lot of the appeal has to do with the noises beckoning from Liska's magical music box. Stones dropping rhythmically into a bucket, weird echoes and electronic effects, marionettes shouting at each other -- these are some of the ingredients going into Liska's concrète lullabies and nursery rhymes, along with a silliness that keeps Svankmajer's menagerie of grotesques from getting too, well, grotesque. I find the weird slavic baroque earthiness of the Svankmajer/Liska world totally enchanting. And I could be wrong but I don't think anyone's ever bothered to put this music together on a record or CD.

So, for the last couple years I've just been listening to my own homemade Liska/Svankmajer bootleg, which includes most of their films from the 60s and early 70s, films like "Historia Naturae" and "Jabberwocky" and "A Game With Stones." Nice music for padding around the living room, making a cup of tea, dressing down your marionette, etc. Enjoy.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Hope everybody had a nice weekend. I'm happy to present this little charmer after finally finding a copy. Another mid-70s mood music curio recorded for yet-to-be-made films and TV shows. The twinkly pixie-dust sprinkled chamber music here is cut from the same cloth as Luboš Fišer's score for Valerie and Her Week of Wonders. It conjures up a whole woodland universe of adolescent mediums and secretive townspeople and village intrigue. It's the kind of music that could have been made entirely by children for children. Very simple mallet and woodwind interludes for surreal dream sequences and coming-of-age montages. Listen here.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Pretty into Werner Nekes lately, although I see there's a learning curve ahead. Here are some film stills. "Hynningen" and "Makimono," two early-70s meditations on Finnish landscape, are totally captivating. A lot of these films feature music by Anthony Moore. Here's the lovely foresty blissout drone poem from the end of "Makimono."

And here's Moore's trippy guitar interlude from Nekes' "Abbandano" in 1970. The music on this one is the best of the lot -- experimental but quite moving and beautiful. Here's a link to the full score of about 30 minutes or so. Recommended.